My Stylized Foliage Workflow

Here's the current workflow I use for the foliage (Blender +  Substance Designer):

I wanted something that looks simple & cute!

And here's a look at the Substance Designer Graph:

The brush pattern is based on Vincent Dérozier's work, see this post for a how-to. For the color I use LT Color Dynamic to simplify the process & make it more predictable. And I also use EZSplatter to distribute the yellow-ish spots. The edge highlight is done via Curve Smooth and Curve Sobel :)

My first try this week looked like this:

I found it was a bit too undefined & looked more disgusting than cute. I solved this by scraping the edges of the highpoly & generally pushing the shapes a bit. Also I edited the roughness (a lot of "disgust" I think came from that) + added edge highlights to further highlight the shapes & create a clearer look.

The colors have stayed the same.

Next Steps

• complete atlas & build duckweed lowpoly assets (they will be seen up close, as the game world is a glass jar)
• continue learning Unity shader graph (so I can later make underwater shaders for the the project etc.)

Here's how the atlas currently looks (still need to add the roots + the leaf underside):

Thanks for looking! I have an Instagram now if you'd like to see WIP art and breakdowns: @tinymoss.